My_Sister_Jodie_ins_pp400.qxd 18/12/07 10:22 Page 1 My Sister Jodie www.kidsatrandomhouse.co.uk My_Sister_Jodie_ins_pp400.qxd 18/12/07 10:22 Page 2 Also available by Jacqueline Wilson Published in Corgi Pups, for beginner readers: THE DINOSAUR’S PACKED LUNCH THE MONSTER STORY-TELLER Published in Young Corgi, for newly confident readers: LIZZIE ZIPMOUTH SLEEPOVERS Available from Doubleday/Corgi Yearling Books: BAD GIRLS THE BED & BREAKFAST STAR BEST FRIENDS BURIED ALIVE! CANDYFLOSS THE CAT MUMMY CLEAN BREAK CLIFFHANGER THE DARE GAME THE DIAMOND GIRLS DOUBLE ACT DOUBLE ACT (PLAY EDITION) GLUBBSLYME THE ILLUSTRATED MUM JACKY DAYDREAM THE LOTTIE PROJECT MIDNIGHT THE MUM-MINDER SECRETS STARRING TRACY BEAKER THE STORY OF TRACY BEAKER THE SUITCASE KID VICKY ANGEL THE WORRY WEBSITE Collections: THE JACQUELINE WILSON COLLECTION includes THE STORY OF TRACY BEAKER and THE BED AND BREAKFAST STAR JACQUELINE WILSON’S DOUBLE-DECKER includes BAD GIRLS and DOUBLE ACT JACQUELINE WILSON’S SUPERSTARS includes THE SUITCASE KID and THE LOTTIE PROJECT Available from Doubleday/Corgi books, for older readers: DUSTBIN BABY GIRLS IN LOVE GIRLS UNDER PRESSURE GIRLS OUT LATE GIRLS IN TEARS KISS LOLA ROSE LOVE LESSONS Join the official Jacqueline Wilson fan club at www.jacquelinewilson.co.uk My_Sister_Jodie_ins_pp400.qxd 18/12/07 10:22 Page 3 DOUBLEDAY London•New York•Toronto•Sydney•Auckland This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly. Adobe ISBN: 9781407043333 Version 1.0 www.randomhouse.co.uk My_Sister_Jodie_ins_pp400.qxd 18/12/07 10:22 Page 4 MY SISTER JODIE A DOUBLEDAY BOOK 978 0 385 61012 4 Published in Great Britain by Doubleday, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books A Random House Group Company This edition published 2008 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Copyright © Jacqueline Wilson, 2008 Illustrations copyright © Nick Sharratt, 2008 The right of Jacqueline Wilson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers. The Random House Group Limited supports The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), the leading international forest certification organisation. All our titles that are printed on Greenpeace-approved FSC-certified paper carry the FSC logo. Our paper procurement policy can be found at www.rbooks.co.uk/environment Mixed Sources Product group from well-managed forests and other controlled sources www.fsc.org Cert no. TT-COC-2139 © 1996 Forest Stewardship Council RANDOM HOUSE CHILDREN’S BOOKS, 61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA www.kidsatrandomhouse.co.uk www.rbooks.co.uk Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm THE RANDOM HOUSE GROUP Limited Reg. No. 954009 A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Printed and bound in Great Britain by William Clowes Ltd, Beccles, Suffolk My_Sister_Jodie_ins_pp400.qxd 18/12/07 10:22 Page 5 For Trish With special thanks to Natasha West and Annelies Hofland My_Sister_Jodie_ins_pp400.qxd 18/12/07 10:22 Page 6 ‘I told you so!’ said Mum triumphantly. My_Sister_Jodie_ins_pp400.qxd 18/12/07 10:22 Page 7 1 Jodie. It was the first word I ever said. Most babies lisp Mumma or Dadda or Drinkie or Teddy. Maybe everyone names the thing they love best. I said Jodie, my sister. OK, I said Dodie because I couldn’t say my Js properly, but I knew what I meant. I said her name first every morning. ‘Jodie? Jodie! Wake up. Please wake up!’ She was hopeless in the mornings. I always woke up early – six o’clock, sometimes even earlier. When I was little, I’d delve around my bed to find my three night-time teddies, and then take them for a dawn trek up and down my duvet. I put my knees up and they’d clamber up the mountain and then slide down. Then they’d burrow back to base camp and tuck into their pretend porridge for breakfast. I wasn’t allowed to eat anything so early. I wasn’t even allowed to get up. I was fine once I could read. Sometimes I got through a whole book before the alarm went off. Then I’d lie staring at the ceiling, 7 My_Sister_Jodie_ins_pp400.qxd 18/12/07 10:22 Page 8 making up my own stories. I’d wait as long as I could, and then I’d climb into Jodie’s bed and whisper her name, give her a little shake and start telling her the new story. They were always about two sisters. They went through an old wardrobe into a magic land, or they went to stage school and became famous actresses, or they went to a ball in beautiful long dresses and danced in glass slippers. It was always hard to get Jodie to wake up prop- erly. It was as if she’d fallen down a long dark tunnel in the night. It took her ages to crawl back to the surface. But eventually she’d open one eye and her arm went round me automatically. I’d cuddle up and carry on telling her the story. I had to keep nudging her and saying, ‘You are still awake, aren’t you, Jodie?’ ‘I’m wide awake,’ she mumbled, but I had to give her little prods to make sure. When she was awake, she’d sometimes take over the story. She’d tell me how the two sisters ruled over the magic land as twin queens, and they acted in their own daily television soap, and they danced with each other all evening at the ball until way past midnight. Jodie’s stories were always much better than mine. I begged her to write them down but she couldn’t be bothered. ‘You write them down for me,’ she said. ‘You’re the one that wants to be the writer.’ I wanted to write my own stories and illustrate them too. ‘I can help you with the ideas,’ said Jodie. ‘You can do all the drawings and I’ll do the colouring in.’ ‘So long as you do it carefully in the right 8 My_Sister_Jodie_ins_pp400.qxd 18/12/07 10:22 Page 9 colours,’ I said, because Jodie nearly always went over the lines, and sometimes she coloured faces green and hair blue just for the fun of it. ‘OK, Miss Picky,’ said Jodie. ‘I’ll help you out but that won’t be my real job. I’m going to be an actress. That’s what I really want to do. Imagine, standing there, all lit up, with everyone listening, hanging on your every word!’ ‘Maybe one of my stories could be turned into a play and then you could have the star part.’ ‘Yeah, I’ll be an overnight success and be offered mega millions to make movies and we’ll live together in a huge great mansion,’ said Jodie. ‘What does a mansion look like?’ I said. ‘Can it have towers? Can our room be right at the top of a tower?’ ‘All the rooms are our rooms, but we’ll share a very special room right at the top of a tower, only I’m not going to let you grow your hair any longer.’ She pulled one of my plaits. ‘I don’t want you tossing it out of the window and letting any wicked old witches climb up it.’ Jodie nudged me. She had started to have a lot of arguments with our mother. She often called her a witch – or worse – but only under her breath. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll keep my plaits safely tied up. No access for wicked witches,’ I said, giggling, though I felt a bit mean to Mum. ‘What about handsome princes?’ ‘Definitely not,’ I said. ‘It’ll be just you and me in Mansion Towers, living happily ever after.’ It was just our silly early-morning game, though I took it more seriously than Jodie. I drew our imaginary mansion, often slicing it open like a 9 My_Sister_Jodie_ins_pp400.qxd 18/12/07 10:22 Page 10 doll’s house so I could illustrate every room. I gave us a huge black velvet sofa with two big black toy pumas lolling at either end. We had two real black cats for luck lapping from little bowls in the kitchen, two poodles curled up together in their dog basket, while twin black ponies grazed in a paddock beside our rose garden. I coloured each rose care- fully and separately, deep red, salmon, peach, very pale pink, apricot and yellow. I even tried to do every blade of grass individually but had to see sense after dabbing delicately for half an hour, my hand aching. I gave us a four-poster bed with red velvet curtains and a ruby chandelier, and one wall was a vast television screen. We had a turquoise swim- ming pool in the basement (with our twin pet dolphins) and a roof garden between the towers where skylarks and bluebirds skimmed the blossom trees.